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AMENDMENT OF THE LAW

I am sorry that the young lady—I mean hon. young Lady—has not been listening. I said that I hoped that the Chancellor was reverting more to the proposal that my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor made for a flat licence costing £25,000 a year. The idea was that if a non-dom paid that, no further inquiries would be made into foreign income. The Chancellor then went much further by saying that in addition to paying the flat fee, investigations would be made into foreign trusts and related financial matters. As I was saying, the non-doms were not prepared to tolerate that; hence the outflow from this country. The Chancellor seems to be moving from that position, but it is very hard to tell even from the press release—it is simply impossible to tell from his speech—whether he has done a complete U-turn. I very much hope that he has and that he has adopted the shadow Chancellor’s more sensible proposal, as a result of which some of those who have moved to Zurich may think again. The press release says that the Chancellor is not going to charge for people’s children. It has always struck me as an extraordinary idea that one should have to pay £30,000 a child, although £35,000 is still going to be payable for a wife. How that applies in a system of independent taxation, I do not know.